What is your Escape Route?

The other day my friend and I were reminiscing about our college days and my friend pointed out my enormous appetite for fictions during those days and my unusual sleep patterns even during exams. When I was reminded of that, it did strike me odd because I did use to read an inordinately large number of fictions in college and sleep (?) – well, don’t even get me started on that! So what was I gaining from these so-called ‘fruitless’ activities?

Looking back, I loved reading story books right from childhood – the fantasies took me to another world of rich imagination where the mystery, triumph against all odds and the aliveness kept me glued to the books.

Since leaving college I had deluded myself with the fact that I was too busy to read fiction – there have been times when I have not read any fiction for many years and then sometimes I felt the twinge of a cord pulling me towards a fiction. However, the guilt of wasting time in a fiction, kept me away – rather read important stuff like the news, science, fact rather than fiction! So, I tried to do that but that somehow did not resonate with me – the power of fiction kept pulling me incessantly.

So, what is this power of fiction?

Can you imagine what it is like to be the only girl in a class full of 70 odd boys? That was my scenario in engineering college (those days not many women ventured into Mechanical Engineering) - I was a bit of a rebel and quite undiplomatic then, where my ego was as big as anybody else’s and I could play second fiddle to none! And in a class full of hormone raging young boys, most of who came from extremely feudalistic societies/households, you can only imagine the war of the worlds!

I had to shut off the incessant chatter around me so I could focus on my goal of making it through in 4 years of engineering college and I realized fiction gave me that escape route. I also discovered that I relied very heavily on sleep as an alternate therapy. A disagreement with anybody, an intrusive comment at class, something bothering me, I would instantly dive my nose into a book or just go to sleep. My room mates often wondered why and how I slept so much, well, now they know why. Sleep was my escape route and so was fiction.

That set me wondering what kind of escapism is this? It was then that I realized my natural instincts of survival kicked in, in an unimaginable way – sleep delayed my instant reaction and gave me a fresh perspective on waking up. Ever heard of the saying ‘Let me sleep over it…’?

And books took me to a place of aliveness and triumph, which acted as my motivator and renewed my energies or often times even gave me an alternate perspective once I had removed myself from the issue at hand. (Interestingly, I never could read sad books with horrific endings – still can’t).

What is your escape route from anything that is distasteful to you and what do you notice about that? Is that escapism or a way of dealing with the challenges that need you to be better equipped before you deal with it? As long as it is helping you in moving forward, you are doing the right thing. However, if there is dissonance and if you are at the same place where you started, it is time to evaluate your escape route….